Certain special kinds of formed steel bars are transported stacked in unit groups on rake cooling beds in metallurgical applications. At the end of the cooling bed, the unit groups must be separated before further processing.
It is known to separate the unit groups stacked on the last cog of the rake cooling bed by electro-mechanically removing the lowest flat material bar. This method is rather involved and may easily damage the material to be transported. Furthermore, it is impossible the ensure that only the lowest bar is actually removed. Very often two or more bars are removed at the same time.
Based on this consideration, it is the object of the present invention to create an apparatus of the above mentioned type which permits a safe one-by-one separation of the stacked flat material units groups in a simple and safe manner.